


Set Them Up And Knock Them Down

by Chet_Un_Gwan



Category: Farscape, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (2004), Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, I am still the only fic in this crossover and that is not actually satisfying!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 10:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18341951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chet_Un_Gwan/pseuds/Chet_Un_Gwan
Summary: Here's the set up: John Crichton makes it back to his end of the universe again by accident.Here's the punchline: it's not the right universe, and Earth is still a long way away.





	Set Them Up And Knock Them Down

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't actually posted fanfic for an extremely long time, to the point at which I might very well be a different person now. And I also do not know how to edit, so I'm posting this with a lot of hope and not much else. But credit (a lot of it) goes to @ophelia-thinks on tumblr for our various rants all going in different directions, and credit (some of it) goes to my sister for being the first ever person I knew who would talk to me about these shows at the same time.

That shouldn't be there, is his first thought. Not his last, which is mostly fuck fuck fuck fuck. But it's what strikes him first; that wormhole absolutely shouldn't be there. There's none of the other tells that used to steer him towards wormholes and now help to steer him away, and it definitely shouldn't be inside a goddamn star. Spitting out a star, sure, been there, done that. Inside of, no. For someone as unfortunately experienced as John is, that's a new one on him. It also shouldn't be sucking Aeryn's prowler in from this distance. He also shouldn't be _driving_ Aeryn's prowler alone, but that belongs in an entirely separate category of shouldn't, and at this point is only going to be an issue if everything else turns out okay.

John is not betting on everything else turning out okay.

 

The wormhole is surprisingly straightforward, no branches, a solid current, no fear of getting lost at the moment. If he could just fight the current long enough to turn around, he could fly right back out. But it's far stronger that he's seen before, and it wouldn't be his life if he could just fly out.

It spits him out after a much longer journey than he thought it would take. For a second, he thinks that the sky is empty. A middle of nowhere for him to starve to death in, once the blue glow of the wormhole snaps shut behind him. Then he realizes that that glow is way too bright, and it hasn't vanished yet. And then a mass of shitty, bolted together metal nearly hits him and he starts swearing loudly.

Once John gets his hands on the controls again, he spins the prowler around and sees- a star. But also a wormhole. But- his nose starts itching and John sneezes, some part of his brain waking up that was long ago supposed to be dead. He can feel the wormhole there, feel it in his brain and his head, like a nail made out of ice and starlight. It's right where he looks and sees a blue star. Impossibly, brilliantly blue, a color that stars aren't supposed to be, a color that doesn't show up in space unless it's there just to fuck him over.

John looks at the wormhole star thing and viscerally hates it. Hates it and everything it represents, and hates that he wants so badly to figure out how it's doing that, and hates the whole goddamn world for a long, long second. Just for that moment, no one around to see, he lets the world reach into the cockpit and break him. For just a heartbeat, his heart shatters and he thinks that this is it. This, finally, is something he can't make it through. It’s too much. Just too much to get through.

Then he packs it all back up, just like he's done a hundred times before, and turns to follow the thing that almost hit him.

It takes getting within a mile of it before John can tell that it's supposed to be a space station. It is an absolute piece of shit, cobbled together roughly and clearly repaired in space with none of the right tools and very few of the right materials. The only part of it that looks new is a ship that's been grafted to the side of it, which in of itself says bad things about the situation. It feels familiar in a way he can't identify. Something long gone but closely held. He pushes that aside, because of course, and focuses on figuring out where he can land instead. The whole surface is rough and dangerous to land on, with one side covered with char marks that John decides to avoid. He finally identifies one section that looks like it might be a docking area, but the whole thing is external.

No one is responding to his transmissions. If there’s an internal hangar on that tiny thing, he’s not going to be let in.

The outside bay it is.

Landing is torture of the worst kind, but John manages it and silently promises to thank Aeryn for all the flight lessons when he gets back to her. He puts on the space walk suit and gets out to see if he can find a door.

He finds it fairly quickly, all things considered. The problem turns out to be the airlock itself, and that right there is when all of John’s unease makes itself known in a more immediate sense. John knows unease, live and breathes anxiety of the deadly kind. Everything is always about to go wrong, and that’s normal. That’s the baseline that everything else gets to build off of. That’s John’s entire goddamn life. Everything goes wrong and then you get back up and find a new disaster and let that go wrong too.

What’s also normal is for alien ships to be alien and for doors not to open the way they look like they ought to. John spends ten minutes of precious air trying to open the door in increasingly creative ways before realizing that, in fact, it’s supposed to open the way he first wanted to try. Turn the handle, crank the door open. It’s just in absolutely terrible shape, as it looks like it is, and it hadn’t moved the first time John had halfheartedly tugged at it.

This isn’t normal. John’s first attempt never works, never goes through, old habits misfiring in a different world. The airlock shouldn’t yield to human instincts. Everything just goes wrong, sure, but then a little thing goes right exactly where it shouldn’t and that is terrifying.

John doesn’t want to go in. He just doesn’t, he want to get in the prowler and go home. He wants to put back the door, back up, just walk right out of wherever here is. He’s tired. This is new, and nothing new is ever good. John just wants to go home.

He goes in and closes the airlock behind him.

 

There’s two Sebaceans there with guns. John expected no less.

A dark skinned woman, tall and stoic and with distinct bags under her eyes. A big blond man, movie star handsome and smug. They look like trouble. This is par for the course.

“I didn’t see a welcome mat,” John says, doing his best to lean on the door frame. There’s no gravity in the ship, which is worrying, and is also making it hard to look nonchalant.

“You know,” the woman says, half humor, half death, “We were just wondering what in god’s name could precision land on this tin can without a scrape, but then not have any idea how to open a door.” She adjusts her grip on her gun, foot hooked under a rung shifting for a better grip. “Wasn't expecting a new face.”

“I live to surprise.” The airlock is also not shaped well for slouching against.

The guy swells up, taking up more room, drawing attention to him. He thinks he's in charge, John thinks to himself, and dubs him Captain Asshole because he's being an asshole about it.

Captain Asshole drawls out, “Surprise me some more, then. What are you doing all the way out here?”

A lot has happened in the last hour, but John decides now that the weirdest part is hearing a Sebacean mangle a southern accent. They've been consistently hitting somewhere in the vaguely British area for awhile now, and changing the script on this of all things is just unsettling. It might be petty, but his dislike for the guy ticks up another notch.

“Oh, I'm passing through, looking at real estate in the area, thought I might ask around about the neighborhood. How's the school system?” John asks, hand drifting towards his holster.

Captain Asshole reacts quickly, raising his own gun and drawling out, “Don’t even try.” John lets his hand drop. Worth an attempt, even if it was unlikely to the extreme to ever succeed. The man continues, “Now, why don’t you give me a straight answer here. What are you doing in this star system, on this ship?”

“I just said, or do you not understand me? Budget run out, no translator microbes out here?”

The woman looks concerned or confused for a second, but John doesn't exactly get a moment to think about that, because the guy is moving towards him.

“Woah woah woah,” John says, “I have questions of my own here,”

Asshole slows down, but stays on the approach, his momentum keeping him going. “And just what are those?”

“Where the frell is this place, to start with.” John wants, vaguely, to move back away from the dude, but between the airlock at his back and the general unwillingness to let someone push him around, he doesn't budge. 

Captain Asshole's now close enough to put a hand on John’s shoulder, the image of confidence and authority, his hand heavy but not directly confining. The man, John sees, is used to being obeyed without the need for enforcement.

Well, fuck that, John thinks, and draws his pulse pistol as fast as he can.

“Buddy, you’re gonna tell me. What is going on!” John shouts and he whirls around, bringing the gun to bear. That man’s lips are pulling back from his teeth in a snarl, his hand knocked askew. John meets his eyes, the only thing left static, and when the woman reaches for her weapon, it’s the other guy who raises his hand for her to stop.

“I can’t tell you. What is going on. Until you tell me who you are!” Captain Asshole grits out each word like they’re supposed to be bullets, weapons, a threat of consequence, but all John feels is the looming sense of everything gone wrong and just waiting to show him how. He laughs. Gotta do something.

“Who _I_ am? We really are out of the Uncharted Territories here, aren’t we. Well damn, you’re a Sebacean, haven’t you heard? I’m John Goddamn Crichton, idiot extraordinaire, destroyer of worlds, the guy who really, really. Wants. To retire.” He’s spinning in place, aim going everywhere, and when Captain Asshole twitches like he’s thinking of lunging, John drags his foot on the floor and comes to a halt. This zero-g stuff might just be fun after all. He points the gun again. Faces the pile of useless authority.

The guy’s eyes look oddly busy, like he’s trying to put together a lot of information really fast. John’s all ready to repeat his first question when suddenly the other woman speaks. “What do you mean, sebacean?”

John blinks. Clenches his hand around Wynona, relaxes it again. He had to have heard wrong. She meant something else. Oh no. Oh, oh no.

“Please don’t have just said that.” he breathes. “Not that.” She even mispronounced the word. “Please, please, tell me you know what Sebacean means, Scarren, Nebari, Delvian, anything, please!” He ends shouting, facing the woman, gun pointing at her.

“Please.” He says. “Tell me I haven’t gone that far.” She stares back, eyes wide like two mirrors.

To the side, Captain Asshole grits out another, “What do you _mean_ ,” but John’s still looking at her. Her gaze softens with something between pity and empathy, and she shakes her head. Just a little. Just enough to have it all crashing down.

John’s eyes close. Arm lowers and then just floats. When Asshole throws him against the bulkhead and then drags him off still spitting questions, he lets him. Everything gone wrong again. All over again.

 

When John pulls his head back out of his ass, he’s alone. The room around him is mostly window, blue starlight pouring in. It takes a moment, pulling himself back together, leaving the empty hallways and scenes of his mind. One prison for another.

The first thing John does is try the door. And try is the right word for it, because he’s not sure how it’s supposed to work. He’s pretty sure it’s locked, but it’s also possible that he’s not doing anything right. At least he has a starting point for it now, because the earlier passing thought comparing the airlock to a submarine door makes a lot more sense. At least it’s human, he thinks, then quickly shuts down that thought before it escapes.

He wretches the wheel to one side, unable to budge it. He keeps pulling anyways. John knows it’s not rusted shut, they came in through this door and had every reason to lock it, but. It’s a door. A human door, and out of everything, this should be one thing that he knows how to operate. He keeps retching. Keeps trying to open the door. Shuts down the part of him that wants to wave a hand over a nearby panel. Goes through the motions of opening this human door.

Until a voice from overhead interrupts. “Uhhhhh…” It glitches faintly. “That door is locked. You’re locked in. You know that, right?”

John jumps about a foot in the air, literally, with the lack of gravity. He whirls around, looking for the speaker or com unit that has to be somewhere. He spots the perforated circle overhead when the voice comes again. “Are you okay?”

“Uh, fine,” he says, trying to get his footing back. “Just dandy. Always looking to add another cell to my list of reviews. This one's looking good, a better view than most.”

“That's bec- because this is really the observatory,” the voice says. “We don't technically have a brig, but this is what we generally use.”

John looks around. “Well, it's nice. Nine out of ten. And who are you?”

“Oh!” The voice glitches again, like a digital stutter. “I'm Hera, I'm the onboard autopilot. I run the ship.”

John relaxes minutely. “Nice to meet you Hera. You can call me John. Any idea what's gonna happen to me next?"

There's a long pause. “I don't think I can really say much to you. I'm- I'm not allowed. But someone will likely be in to talk to you.”

John frowns. “Not allowed?”

“Sorry, I have to go.” And the speaker cuts off.

John twitches, briefly. “Ooh,” he says under his breath, “there are so many things I don't like about that.”

 

By the time the door creaks open, John has gone past angry, into manic, and has emerged out the other side as someone who seems fairly calm, all things considered. That probably wouldn’t fool the majority of the Uncharted Territories any more, but as John is so unhappily aware, this isn’t the Uncharted Territories. Nor is it Tormented space, Peacekeeper space, Scarren space or anywhere he knows. He can put on whatever face he wants.

Captain Asshole swaggers in, right on time for the intimidation attempt. John’s a little impressed despite himself at someone who can manage a swagger in zero gravity, but that’s about where the effect ends. Asshole sure is trying to loom, but apparently he spent too much time practicing his swagger instead because he’s not quite there. John gives him a point for trying anyways. It’s hard to outdo Scorpius in terms of looming, so it’s not exactly a fair meter to be judged by.

“So…” Asshole drags out the word, turning it into a drawl. “You are currently one of the bigger mysteries on this ship, and believe me when I say that you have some very stiff competition."

“It’s always nice when you try your best and _do_ succeed.”

Asshole doesn’t seem to appreciate John’ sarcasm, and chooses to move past it. That, if anything, is what makes John feel more secure in this whole encounter. “I’ve got some information I need from you, and you’re going to give it to me.”

John keeps gazing out the giant window, blue star shining.

The guy re-adjusts his position, settling in. “Let’s start easy, with introductions. I’m Colonel Warren Kepler, and you already met Lovelace. We’re with Goddard Futuristics on an exploratory mission.” At this, he stops, looking expectantly at John, probably waiting for him to introduce himself in kind. John opts to start literally twiddling his thumbs. Colonel _Kepler_ grits his teeth.

“Now, I’ve got no evidence that you’re anything but a very lost astronaut,” Kepler says, trying to sink back into his smirk, reestablish who's in charge. It’s undercut by John’s snickering.

“That's one way to frelling put it.”

“Then why don't you put it a different way?” Kepler's voice edging into a snarl. “Give me some context here, help me help you.”

It's such a blatant lie, such an open manipulation, that John doesn't worry about leaning into it. It's barely a probe for information and more of a opening for John to say whatever he wants.

He stretches. It’s been awhile since he’s had a chance to put his story into his own words, without the shadow of so much destruction coloring how it’s heard. He thought he would like it more than this. 

“Once upon a time. There was an astronaut.” Footsteps down rooms in his own mind. “And that astronaut wanted to go and test a hypothesis.” Blue. So much blue. “It didn’t go the way it should have.”

“I’m going to need more details than that. And any proof you might have to backup your story.”

“Ha!” John lurches up from his half-reclined pose. “Proof! Wow! That is. Such a novel concept. Mostly people are just worried about whether or not I’m armed.” His hand touches his empty holster. “Speaking of which, where’d ya put Wynonna?”

Kepler smiles thinly. “That’s a conversation for later. Maybe for now you could at least elaborate on your story?”

John decides that he’s not feeling like making this easy. “Why don’t you do some elaborating? What’s a bunch of humans doing so far from home? You are… all humans, right?” John pauses to make sure he has eye contact, grins without mirth. “Wouldn’t want to go around making assumptions. I know how it gets with stuff like that.”

“You’re in human hands,” Kepler says. “There's no evidence to suggest that aliens are real. Beyond that, I’m afraid it’s need to know only. Briefings go through the chain of command, and I’m afraid a civilian like yourself isn’t part of that.”

“I haven't exactly been a civilian for awhile.”

“So what have you been?”

John grins, his only answer. It's not the kind of expression that hides anything, but he knows that this asshole won't understand. Won't extend anything like empathy to try and unravel the John Crichton Mystery, even to use it against him. Scorpius, he is not.

Kepler leans back, unpleasant expression firmly in place. “At this point, I really don’t care who you are or where you claim to be from. I’ve got my orders. I’ve got my _job_. And until you start getting in the way of that, I don’t see why we can’t get along.” He spits out the last part, tone at odds with words, and John feels some vague flicker of pity. This isn’t the face of a man at peace with himself and his orders, however much he might lie to himself about it. Kepler may claim his job as his defining trait, but he’s still got _person_ underneath, somewhere. If anything, that makes him more dangerous. At least you can predict someone who’s been boiled down to just one loyalty, know where they'll go and who they'll try to rescue.

John leans back against the wall, gazing drifting towards the window. “Then I guess I'll try not to get in the way.” For whatever good that'll do.

After that, there really doesn't seem to be anything left to say, and after a few more probing questions that John ignores, Kepler leaves.

Kepler doesn't lock him back into the room, which is both nice and also clearly supposed to be some kind of power move. Unfortunately, John has already dropped a nuke down a mineshaft he was in and also nearly destroyed the galaxy, so not locking a door really doesn't register. Kepler may be trying to make a point about how he's not a threat, but at some point you gotta have faith in your ability to destroy everything you care about.

John heads right out and tries to figure out where the hell he is.

 

He gets lost almost immediately, another set of hallways, twisting into a maze with its own obscure logic. It's even worse with no gravity, ups and downs just as confusing as lefts and rights. He wanders for some indeterminate amount of time, trying to figure out how things are laid out.

John definitely hasn't figured anything out by the time he runs into another person. Literally, he's too far away from a wall to halt his momentum, and slams right into the man who just came around the corner. They bounce off each other, John grabbing one of the bars on the wall to steady himself, the other guy mostly just flailing in space until he rotates to a halt.

John takes a moment to look at him. The guy is scruffy to the extreme, but his most notable feature is how _starved_ he looks physically, and how he doesn't have any of that in his expression. Nothing of that feral look that John's gotten so good at recognizing. He mostly just looks baffled.

“Oh, uh. Hey, dude?” The guy flails a little more until he's upside right in reference to John. “Are you like. That new guy? Who showed up randomly?”

“Yep,” John says, running with it. “That's me.”

“Cool,” the guy responds. He's staring, like he's trying to put together a bunch of different things. “That's ah. Yeah, cool. You are not who I was expecting.” The guy flashes a nervous grin, and before John can ask what that means, plows on. “My name's Eiffel, by the way, hey, have you had anything to eat yet? I was heading to the mess hall."

John's stomach begs him to reorganize priorities, to place food above answers. It's not a compelling argument, but Eiffel could at least tell him how to get around.

“Sure,” John says. “Lead the way. I'm Crichton, by the way. John.” It's not like it could be worse than food cubes, anyways.

 

As it turns out, what Eiffel wanted out of the mess hall was caffeine, not food. He's willing enough to get John some food though, and he does try to explain how the ship is laid out. He does a really bad job, but he tries.

He also really, really doesn't stop talking. “So are you like.” Eiffel’s got some kind of giddy curiosity in him, leaning in close for a secret. “An alien?”

“I got told very clearly by your boss that aliens aren’t real.”

Eiffel shrugs. “Yeah, but Kepler’s full of shit pretty much all of the time, and anyways, we’ve gotten transmissions from some aliens.”

“Oh?” says John, mostly bored.

“I taped over the transmit button on my radio, so they picked up 24/7 Radio Eiffel and learned how to speak English in my voice.”

John is abruptly less bored and more horrified. There is so much to unpack in just that sentence. Setting aside aliens that _steal your voice_ , there’s the very concept of broadcasting your location constantly that makes his skin start crawling. But also _aliens that steal voices_ , who might also be tied to that blue hole in the sky. “It’s not uh. Still transmitting, is it?”

Eiffel furrows his brow. “Actually, I don’t remember if we ever turned it off. It was kinda a busy day.”

John resists the urge to just lay down on the table, but it’s close. Eiffel goes on, “But I guess you would know that if you were an alien. So that means you’re from Earth! Man, you must have been there more recently than I have, dude, you have to tell me. Pizza still exists, right? And cigarettes? They’re still there, right?” Eiffel grins, his tone turning joking and fun, encouraging John to join in. John musters up a thin smile and he looks down at the cup in his hands. Eiffel told him that it was a really bad seaweed based replacement for coffee, and that it was barely worth drinking. It’s far closer than anything he’s drunk on Moya.

Eiffel’s hands shake as he goes to pick up his own mug. He flashes a grin that is one hundred percent surface level and also one hundred percent sincere.

John sighs. If he had any doubts that he was back among humans, this one guy would single handedly settle them. John had forgotten how to have these conversations; even on the return trip to Earth he had to be on guard all the time. A shield and translator for his friends, a bridge point. Now this guy wants to talk about pizza and cigarettes like they’re something that belongs to him and not a long vanished relic of a different life. It’s not the kind of conversation that John excels at anymore.

There’s a difference between them, and John wonders if Eiffel really thinks that his life has changed. John has no illusions about this, he stopped being a person who could live on Earth years and years and years ago, but Eiffel seems to think that there’s such a thing as going back. As if just because he wants to, it could happen. As if the world doesn’t mean anything in the face of one person.

John’s watched the world set him on fire too many times to underestimate it like that.

Eiffel’s mug clatters as he sets it down, and John narrows his eyes at his shaking hands. Eiffel’s clearly used to them enough that he compensates by holding things with both hands, but he hesitates enough that they seem to be new. John thinks about being diplomatic about asking. But then Eiffel takes a breath to start talking again, and John decides that heading him off is better than any alternative.

“What happened with your hands?”

“Huh?” Eiffel looks down at them. “Oh, you mean the shakes. Well, word to the wise, but freezing yourself in cryo about a hundred times is not always the best solution. Was in this case, but uh. Still. Pretty rough. Not fun.”

“You did that and only have shaky hands?” The memory of Jool’s dead cousin surfaces, and even though he _knows_ that it’s different, John can’t shake the chill setting in on his shoulders.

Eiffel laughs, thin and nervous. “Yeah, well, uh. I had… help? I guess?” He rubs a thumb over one of his fingernails and looks nervous. “I’m not… exactly sure what I’m allowed to tell you, but um. If Hilbert ever offers medical care, turn him down, okay? I got lucky.”

“What do you mean?” John asks, voice turning harder.

Eiffel glances at the door and hesitates.

“Eiffel. What do you mean.”

“Just,” his hands tremble again. “He’s got this virus. It’s supposed to heal, or cure horrible diseases or something, but. He’s killed a lot of people. Just don’t let him stick you with anything.”

Try as he might, John can’t get Eiffel to elaborate on that for the rest of the meal.

 

He's trying to eat something that, technically, is not as bad as food cubes in some out of the way corridor when Lovelace corners him. He had ducked out here to get away from the bombs guy whose name he still hasn't gotten, who came in soon after the conversation with Eiffel and keeps glaring at him like John shot his pet. It's a tense situation, and John is too tired to deal with it right now. For a second John is glad that it's Lovelace who found him and not anyone else, but that fades when she grabs his arm and mutters, "We need to talk," in his ear. She keeps walking without a pause and without letting go of his arm, dragging him along.

"Hey, not that being brought different places unwillingly isn't a major part of my life, but normally when people kidnap me I have an idea of where we're going," John says, making no attempt to lower his voice at all. Lovelace glares at him.

“You want to get a better picture of what’s going on on this ship? Follow me.”

John follows Lovelace down the hall. He's already lost track of which hall, because they all look the same and he's also not trying to figure them out at all anymore. They're stark white and weightless. He hates them.

Lovelace propels herself forward effortlessly, pulling up every so often to let John catch up. He's not as fast as she is, unused to moving like this, and even if he is trying to learn, it’s not instantaneous. She moves like she was made for zero-g. As slow as he is, John doesn’t envy her.

They reach a door, and Lovelace tugs him in quickly. Inside is an older man, bald and face furrowed into a dozen crevasses. He watches John with something in his eyes that John recognizes. A kind of hunger, a kind of curiosity. He _hates it._

“John, this is Doctor Hilbert,” Lovelace gestures toward the man. “Hilbert, John Crichton. The new guy.”

Eiffel’s scanty warning comes back, and John sees it. The danger. Kepler tried to be the most dangerous person on board by looming and meaningfully intoning his words, but John’s been around enough to see the threat that Hilbert presents. _It is never just science._

John decides then and there to never be alone in a room with him.

“Come on,” Lovelace says. “We have a place where we can talk.” She leads them back out.

Hilbert and Lovelace get tenser as they go deeper into the ship, peering around corners even though Lovelace apparently already made sure that everyone else was busy. When they finally reach the door, Hilbert is almost twitching and Lovelace keeps tapping her holster.

John is not tense. This isn't his problem, his secret. These aren't his weightless hallways to skulk around in. The door has something written on it, and when he can't read it in English at first, he tilts his head, trying to switch over to Sebacean script. Lovelace catches the movement and says, “It's in Russian.”

Right. That's a language he knows how to swear and order drinks in. Perks of a dad who buddied around with cosmonauts. Not enough to read this, however, and neither of them offer to translate it.

Instead, Lovelace cranks the handle and opens the door, gestures them in. John trails after Hilbert, tired of all this cloak and dagger, and then he looks up and Lovelace nearly crashes into him as he grabs the doorway.

It's a chair. It's a chair, in the middle of the room, and it is the chair. Somewhere in his mind, John is logging the differences, how this one is slightly inclined, the lack of a platform, but that's just one room filled with a rational voice. The chair sits in the center of the room and the rooms in John's head scream.

Panic and fear pound on locked doors, he races down hallways shouting. Ghosts shutter alongside him. Lovelace is barking at him, trying to push him into the room, but that's all outside. He's calling out, demanding answers, help, please, not this, not again. And then- John throws open the door in his mind and the room is empty. Right. Harvey is gone. No Harvey, no ghosts, not even the twisting blue equations hiding in the walls. He has to do this alone.

He pulls himself out without a gasp, his own expert locomotion, and pushes into the room, keeping to the edges.

“Crichton?” Lovelace enters and gives him a look, assessing. He looks back and lets the empty through. Nothing to see here.

“So what’s up.” he says. The chair is in the room, but he doesn’t have to look at it. “What’s with the James Bond creeping around corners deal? We playing ultimate hide and go seek?”

Hilbert huffs in annoyance and John feels a little bit better. “Hardly,” he says, “The situation on this ship has a bit more gravity than that.”

Lovelace’s eye are still going between him and the chair, but John pushes that aside. “Let me guess. You’re the good guys.” Lovelace’s chin stiffens and Hilbert very deliberately says nothing. “Tall and angry is the bad guy.”

“Not just him,” Lovelace adds.

John shrugs, it’s details on the larger picture. “And the good guys want to stop the bad guys.”

“Something like that,” Hilbert allows.

“And you want my help.”

Hilbert doesn’t meet his eyes, but Lovelace does. It’s an intense look, like a lot of Lovelace is, and it makes John twitchy. He wants to move, to distract. He wants to kick over the chair and tell Lovelace that he doesn’t want to hear the rest of the story.

“We have a plan,” Lovelace says, “We just have to figure out how to work you into it.”

“Careful with that,” he responds.

Her eyes tighten and she continues on past him. “The SI-5 crew arrived a short while ago, after we… messed up an attempt to get back to Earth. That’s Kepler, Jacobi, and Maxwell,” she adds, seeing his lack of recognition. “They’re here to make sure we _stay_ out here, to keep us from getting home, and probably to kill us after the mission ends. We have to stop them. We have to get home.” The eye contact is killing John. “We just need to get the others on our side about this, and we already have an idea of how to convince Minkowski.”

Lovelace shifts her gaze over John’s shoulder, loosing him, letting him go. “We need you on our side for the same reason as we need them. This is a small ship. There’s no way to take a neutral side here. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

“Oh no!” John pushes himself out of his slumped stance and starts to drag himself around the edge of the room, resentful of how hard it is to pace in zero gravity. “I’m not doing this.”

“Do not be foolish,” Hilbert scoffs, “You are here now, you are a part of this.”

“Don’t have to be!”

“John.” Lovelace's voice pauses him. “I'm going to through with this with you or without you.”

He grits his teeth and turns to face her, ready to shout her down.

She's glaring at him and the words crumble in his throat. She is burning, incandescent with righteous anger. She is vivid and protective and she believes that she can get everyone home together. She is ready to burn herself up for this, a martyr with only one goal. And it isn't even a bad goal to have. John aches, somewhere deep inside, a longing for that kind of want, or maybe more accurately, a longing for that lack of guilt.

John thinks of Hera, a ship that can't land, and he thinks about Eiffel, whose hands shake. He thinks about how Hilbert keeps looking at that chair.

He doesn't think that everyone is getting home in one piece.

"Second verse, same as the first," John mutters under his breath, "a whole lot faster and a whole lot worse." Then, raising his voice again, "Listen guys, your mutiny seems, if not spectacularly planned out, at least like a good idea. But it has nothing to do with me. I just got here and, hey, really? I just want to go home."

The chair lurks in the center of the room. Not a traditional place for lurking, but what else can you call such an unpleasant reminder. It sure as hell doesn't sit there innocently.

Lovelace's back straightens, her gazing focusing even more. "Unless you know something we don't, I'm pretty sure that's not an option." She says. "I don't know how you got here, but since you didn't just immediately leave, I'm guessing it's not a two-way street. And that means you're a part of this."

John turns and pushes out of the room.

 

"Hey Hera, uh. Do you." John puts his finger to his forehead, tries to focus past the complete lack of sleep he's running on. "Do you know anything about the room in the back of the ship where I just was? The creepy one with the fucking. Chair. The goddamn chair."

"What?"

"The room," John tries again, "I just came from, about two hallways behind me?"

"I- I don't know where you were."

"What do you mean?"

"I- I mean. There's nothing there. I don't. I don't know how you got where you are."

Here's voice statics in the middle of her sentence, and John gets the message. She sounds genuinely confused, and a little scared, and John knows the feeling. He hopes she doesn't grow out of that. Doesn't start accepting the things in her head as normal, doesn't make up names for them to set them apart from the outside world. He doesn't want to care about this, about her and the ship and the whole damn thing, but her voice glitches and shutters, and he does.

"Don't worry about it," he says, "no big deal, just got a little turned around. You're a big ship, you know that?"

"Oh!" Hera's voice evens out, "I'm not- I'm not the ship. I'm just the onboard AI, I can control parts of the ship, but. I'm not the ship."

"Right." He says. "You're not the ship."

Her voice echoes down the hall but it's just her voice, transplanted into a metal shell. Suddenly, the walls all feel too close, in a way he knows that would never have bothered Aeryn. He has to get out.

 

John floats in his aggressively borrowed space suit, watching the star. The station crew swore that it's secretly a red dwarf, but John looks at that flickering blue and knows what it is. The watery light winks at him, so close to the wormholes he tried to leave behind. He wonders if Kepler knows what it is. If that piece of information is hidden in the depths of his 'need to know' briefings, or if he was sent up here with half a picture and a whole ton of faith. Both seem plausible. Kepler is exactly the kind of person John hated on Earth, on his Earth, and it’s strange to think about something so, so far away.

He’s going to get back. That’s what he thinks to himself, floating in a different space. He thinks of his wife, his son. The family he wants to return to, on the other side of a wormhole. He doesn’t want to leave them behind. He doesn’t want to be stuck here, far from home, doesn’t want this place to get its claws in him and change him. Doesn’t want to get involved with Lovelace’s mutiny. Doesn’t want this to become his problem.

He can see it coming. Recognizes the shape of it, under Kepler’s secrets and Hilbert’s experiments. The fingers in Hera’s brain. John can see the path laid out at Eiffel’s feet, and he knows exactly how to walk it, better than Eiffel does. It’s not like it’d be the first time.

Not again, he thinks, please. Not again.

John tilts his head upwards, away from the star until he’s looking out onto the darkness filling the rest of space. “Please,” he says out loud. His voice bouncing around the airtight helmet, coming back around to him. Outside, outer space just keeps going, on and on and on. “Please don’t do this to me.” He hears his prayer in his own ears. A wish on a star bouncing right back to him. He closes his eyes.

No one responds. Not the Ancients, not Zhan or her Goddess, no Leviathan swooping down like a teardrop angel, not even the aliens that Eiffel swears he heard. Just John and the big blue hungry monster, promising once again to ruin his life.

He stays out there for a long, long time.


End file.
